The Animal Manifesto (21 page)

If we ask, is it possible for animals to tell us what they want? Apparently so. Renowned ape-language researcher Sue Savage-Rumbaugh did just this with the bonobos she has studied for years, Kanzi, Panbanisha, and Nyota. Then she coauthored a peer-reviewed paper of her discoveries in the
Journal of

Applied Animal Welfare Science.
Sue and her colleagues developed a method for conducting two-way conversations with these amazing beings using a keyboard with symbols (or lexigrams), and using this, she could actually ask them questions and record their responses. Sue notes, “Although it is true that I chose the items listed as critical to the welfare of these bonobos and facilitated the discussion of these particular items, I did not create this list arbitrarily. These items represent a distillation of the things that these bonobos have requested repeatedly during my decades of research with them.”

Sue discovered that these were the items the bonobos agreed were important for their welfare:

1. Having food that is fresh and of their choice.
   
2. Traveling from place to place.
   
3. Going to places they have never been before.
   
4. Planning ways of maximizing travel and resource procurement.
   
5. Being able to leave and rejoin the group, to explore, and to share information regarding distant locations.
   
6. Being able to be apart from others for periods of time.
   
7. Maintaining lifelong contact with individuals whom they love.
   
8. Transmitting their cultural knowledge to their offspring.
   
9. Developing and fulfilling a unique role in the social group.
   
10. Experiencing the judgment of their peers regarding their capacity to fulfill their roles, for the good of the group.
    
11. Living free from the fear of human beings attacking them.
    
12. Receiving recognition, from the humans who keep them in captivity, of their level of linguistic competency and their ability to self-determine and selfexpress through language.
    

The bonobos live in captivity, yet they articulated a range of seemingly universal needs and desires: to eat well, to have the freedom to move about, to have time alone as well as to be an active, admired member of a social group, to be stimulated by novelty, to be appreciated for the beings they are, and to live free from fear. Enriched and challenging social and physical environments are clearly important to them, as they would be to most animals, but perhaps particularly to those living in confined situations with limited options. If we could apply these same communication techniques with other species, how revolutionary would that be? Our fellow animals could tell us what they want and need, and by doing this, we could make “good welfare” reflect true compassion.

I realize that no one is perfect. Without meaning to, good people can do bad things to animals. Yet we all can do more to make the world a more compassionate and less cruel place for all beings. What is important is that we lead by example and that we engage in compassionate activism, hopefully proactively. Although we live in an imperfect world and although we’re all fallible, this does not mean that anything goes. Rather, it means that we all must work that much harder to make more sustainable, ethical, and humane choices. We can make a positive difference, each and every one of us, by working together to create a more compassionate world. Isn’t that why we are here?

“To see animals who have been tortured all their lives be able to live on this ranch and be loved, to have someone fall in love with one of the animals and want to care for it, is one of the most wonderful feelings in the world.”

— David Groobman, founder of Kindness Ranch

ANY MANIFESTO IS A CALL TO ACTION
. This animal manifesto is a plea to regard animals as fellow sentient, emotional beings, to recognize the cruelty that too often defines our relationship with them, and to change that by acting compassionately on their behalf. To a very large extent, we control the lives of our fellow animals. We’re their lifeguards. It’s essential that we move rapidly to make kindness and compassion the basis of our interactions with animals. We shouldn’t be afraid to make changes that improve animals’ lives. Indeed, we should embrace them. Such changes will only help heal ourselves and our world.

At a meeting in Palermo, Italy, a veterinarian who was in charge of the well-being of cows going to slaughter told me that he saw a cow cry. While he wasn’t absolutely certain the
water dripping from the cow’s eye was a tear, the cow had reason to grieve, for she had just seen, heard, and smelled her friends being killed. The experience was enough for the veterinarian to request a transfer to another job.

As difficult as it can be, we must remain open to the emotions, and too often the pain, of our fellow creatures, and we must let this spur us to action. Our alienation from animals and nature kills our hearts, and we don’t even realize how numb we ‘ve become until we witness the beauty of nature and the wonder of life: something as simple as a squirrel performing acrobatics as she runs across a telephone wire, a bird alighting on a tree limb and singing a beautiful melody, a bee circling a flower, or a child reveling at a line of ants crossing a hiking trail. In these small moments, we feel our inherent connection to all creatures and all of nature. What will future generations say when they look back and see how, despite what we knew, we still tortured animals and decimated pristine habitats for our own gain? How could we miss the obvious connection? That when we destroy them we destroy ourselves? As the philosopher and master magician David Abram constantly reminds us, we live in a more-than-human-world, and we must never forget this.

Those who care about animals and Earth are involved in an ever-growing social and political movement, and the time has indeed come to move forward proactively to educate, to raise consciousness, and to effect change in the lives of animals.

There is already a lot happening to make animal protection a meaningful part of the political agenda, and it’s encouraging news. In 2002, the Party for the Animals was founded in the

Netherlands, and in 2006 it gained two seats in the Dutch parliament, becoming the world’s first party to gain parliamentary seats with an agenda focused primarily on animal rights. Though it was founded to fight for animal rights and welfare, it also seeks to be more than a single-issue political party. As of January 1, 2007, the Party for the Animals had 6,370 members.

In August 2008, the International Primatological Congress held in Edinburgh, Scotland, held a symposium on invasive research on great apes, one of the first of its kind ever at this prestigious meeting. This important gathering occurred at the same time that the European Union was considering revising and updating its regulations over the use of animals in research (Directive 86/609), potentially to include a total ban on the use of great apes and wild-caught primates in invasive research. Then, in November 2008, the European Parliament adopted a written declaration urging the European Union to enact this change, along with establishing a timetable for replacing the use of all primates in scientific experiments with alternatives. In June 2009, animal activist Jasmijn de Boo, cofounder of the organization Animals Count, put animals on the agenda of the European Parliament elections. It turns out that EU politicians receive more mail on issues of animal protection than on any other topic.

In July 2009, China drafted the country’s first law on animal protection, which would cover all wild and domestic animals. This is the first Chinese legislation to propose criminal punishment for animal cruelty. Even in Spain, an anti-bullfighting movement is succeeding. In 2007, official government statistics tallied 2,622 bullfighting events that used 12,167 innocent animals, and the Spanish government subsidized bullfighting to the tune of 560 million euros. But as physician and animal activist Núria Querol i Viñas tells me, attitudes are changing.

According to a recent survey, 72 percent of Spaniards have no interest in bullfighting, and only 8 percent of Spaniards consider themselves supporters. In 1989, Tossa de Mar became the first city to declare itself as anti-bullfighting, and so far fortyseven cities have joined, including Barcelona in 2004. In the small Portuguese town of Viana do Castelo, which has a bullfighting tradition dating back to 1871, the mayor banned bullfighting in early 2009.

In the United States, California has passed some major legislation. In July 2008 Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a law that strengthened the protection of downed cows (prohibiting their sale or slaughter), and in November 2008, California voters passed Proposition 2, which helps protect farm animals from inhumane confinement and cages. In New Jersey, Farm Sanctuary achieved a precedent-setting victory after a ten-year battle with the state’s Department of Agriculture. To quote Farm Sanctuary’s press release: “In a monumental legal decision, the New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously declared that factory farming practices cannot be considered ‘humane’ simply because they are ‘routine husbandry practices.’”

A few years ago I discovered the wonderful book titled
1968
by Mark Kurlansky, and I was reminded how great it was to be a child of the 1960s — how important it is to look into your heart and to get out and do something to change the world for the better. Kurlansky notes that in the 1960s there were many people who were fed up with what was happening and that “this gave the world a sense of hope. . . and a sense that where there is wrong, there are always people who will expose it and try to change it.” What was happening then was simply not acceptable. This surely holds for animal use and abuse by humans today. As the late Gretchen Wyler, founder
of the Ark Trust, used to say, “Cruelty can’t stand the spotlight.” And it can’t.

Every individual action shines a light, whether it’s motivated by a desire to change society or simply to fix one injustice in the life of one animal. Also, we need to remain as light as we can despite the challenges and the abuse that breaks our hearts, to prevent ourselves from burnout. We need to speak to those who don’t agree with us. I know that it’s often exasperating, but there is hope, and every accomplishment, no matter how minor it seems, fuels our collective work on behalf of animals. Keep in mind what Henry Spira, founder of Animal Rights International, did in the 1970s working from his small apartment in New York City. Spira and his grassroots organization were responsible for having federal funding pulled on a project in which researchers at the American Museum of Natural History performed surgery on cat genitals and pumped them with various hormones to see how the mutilated cats would behave sexually. Spira also formed the Coalition to Abolish the Draize Test, a test that involves using rabbits to test eye makeup. The Draize test is torture, and rabbits, who have very sensitive eyes, suffer immensely. By 1981 the cosmetics industry itself awarded$1 million to Johns Hopkins University’s School of Hygiene and Public Health to establish the Center for Alternatives to Animal Testing. Most cruelty-free products trace their history back to Spira’s tireless and unflagging efforts to stop animal abuse.

A little bit of success here and there is all it takes to keep up our motivation to make the lives of animals better. Simply by speaking out, we can have an influence and change minds, and I’m happy to talk to those who need some convincing. In March 2006 I jumped at the opportunity to give a lecture at the annual meetings of the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees in Boston. I was received warmly and the discussion that
followed my lecture on animal sentience and emotions was friendly, even if it was met with some skepticism. After my talk, a man who’s responsible for enforcing the Animal Welfare Act at a major university admitted to me that I had confirmed his ambivalence about some of the research that’s permitted under the act. From now on, he said, he would enforce the current legal standards more strictly and also work to establish more stringent regulations. As with this man, many people have mixed feelings about how animals in their care are treated, and they just need someone to confirm their intuition that the animals they work with are suffering. Though I don’t know all that the man did afterward, I did learn that in 2008 he recommended that I be invited to a conference about enriching the lives of laboratory animals, and I was invited to such a meeting in November 2009 as a voice from the other side. Though I would like to see animal research phased out entirely, improving laboratory conditions is a first step, and clearly, this man had become one more person working with me to try to improve the lives of these animals.

Around the world, individual citizens, politicians, and governments are working to save animal lives and to establish new laws that give them increased rights and protections. Here are some recent headlines:

“Colorado is now the first state in the country to ban the use of gestation crates and veal crates by action of a state legislature. Florida, Arizona and Oregon have prohibited gestation crates.

Arizona has prohibited veal crates. And a California measure to prohibit veal crates, gestation crates and battery cages recently qualified for November’s ballot.”

“[Lily] Tomlin last year took up the cause of Jenny the psychologically scarred elephant at the Dallas Zoo, joining in a communitywide effort to have her . . . relocated to a sanctuary in Tennessee. The zoo did eventually drop its plan to ship Jenny to a wildlife park in Mexico, but Jenny fans still haven’t given up on landing Jenny a home in Tennessee.